secretfanspace | Twelfth Post!

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

POST NAMER TBC-- work harder, meme!

Welcome back, anyway! Chat fandom, media, creative things, weirdness from around the net, funny stuff, anything! Meme awaits!

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

Current Mood: impressed

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From: (Anonymous)

Finished Career of Evil. I enjoyed it more on a reread, especially from a feminist angle, though I think I was correct in my initial impression this one was a bit like Cuckoo, in that the clues were really thin and shaky. This time, though, they're the clues to whodunnit. I find the pivotal sea holly too much of a cheat, as it relies on knowledge from outside the novel, plus the initial description doesn't actually specify that it's in bloom. So I continue to think Silkworm is better-constructed.

But then, this is more about Robin's backstory than anything else. I went in knowing that, this time, and found it more enjoyable as a result. The first time I read it, I found the main mystery a bit boring "which of these guys did the murder? At least 2 of them are interchangeable, from the reader's POV!" The story would feel much the same whether the killer was revealed to be Brockbank or Laing, after all. So why care as the duo puzzle over whether it might be one or the other?

The parts from the POV of the serial killer remain unconvincing, but I just see them as stores of clues. I noticed on this read that he says very early that he's living with someone working night-shifts; a more alert me would have guessed that this meant a nurse, and that Hazel was a good candidate. The various women working in brothels of various sorts are probably partly intended as red herrings for this line. But I was tired the first time I read it, and iirc missed this detail entirely.

Onto Lethal White, my least fave. I remember this one involving a lot of tedious stuff about horses and paintings and paintings of horses. Hoping it's more fun on a reread, as Cuckoo was.

From: (Anonymous)

Will add that imo Career of Evil doesn't work too well as a detective novel, but it works well as a thriller; it's exciting! Many brushes with death! I did enjoy it.

The TV people are such cowards for nixing the "transabled community" plotline, though. Anyone coming to the book thinking they know what to expect, having watched the TV show, is going to get a surprise... :'D Just imagine a director's cut ep where Tempest is scooting around in the wheelchair she doesn't need and rating businesses for their accessibility on the Internet! And if this were HBO, there'd be a fake amputation fetish forum up as a promo... So many possibilities... ;_;

From: (Anonymous)

Also... So, a big reason for wanting to reread the whole series is to hopefully pick up more clues on the 'who killed Leda?' plot. Given Rowling's preference for twists and red herrings, I feel like it's going to be Shanker or Lucy. I didn't consider Lucy at ALL the first time around, but on a reread, I feel like it's pointing that way. She's mentioned in every book; a painting on her wall is associated with a morgue; she has motive to hate Leda. I was thinking that Rowling wouldn't want it to be a female killer, given the feminist current in the books... but these books have a roughly equal balance of male and female murderers, and also, Rowling's a mother to a daughter; I think she'd take a dim view of Leda and so far the books haven't got into that, because Strike is very forgiving of her (understandably!). But at the very least I think the contrast between his experience growing up and Lucy's is going to come up, at some point. Read through that lens, Career of Evil feels like it's laying groundwork for motive.

With Shanker, meanwhile, there are some things you could read as hints (Robin fearing him at first sight; narration that says repeatedly not to underestimate him; his tendency to only turn up to help AFTER the main characters have had a kicking). He's established to have access to Leda at the time of the murder, he reacts strangely to things, and he isn't afraid to, well, shank people. He is also mentioned in book 1, although not by name. But I don't think Rowling would be keen on a main plot where someone takes in a kid off the street, only for him to murder them. I also don't think she'd want to imply that Strike was such a bad judge of character.

I think it has to be someone close to Strike, because that makes a more interesting story. So rn I'm torn between thinking it's silly to suspect Lucy at all, and thinking it was TOTALLY Lucy. Or possibly indirectly and she helped cover it up; method seems like a weird one for something done in anger. Seems more like a cool-headed killing to hide something. Lots of contradictions! Will be reading closely! :).

From: (Anonymous)

(It's hard to imagine Rowling wanting a main plot where a daughter kills her mother. Otoh, a mother who takes her daughter to live in a series of squats with a series of rapey, violent boyfriends, when she could just take the kids to live with her family in Cornwall whenever? But doesn't want to because she finds it *boring*? Either there's much more to Leda and her family are secretly terrible, or Lucy's murderer-reveal speech writes itself.)

From: (Anonymous)

but yeah, could also see someone doing it when angry on her behalf, and first book did say she was on fairly good terms with her dad. or could see her seeing that leda was in trouble and angrily leaving her to it, rather than helping, not expecting her to actually die.

From: (Anonymous)

Onto Lethal White. Now, I'm trying to lose weight. I put on 2kg in the last fortnight, and I blame the Strike books. There is a chocolate orange in the cupboard, that I need to resist.

Otoh: I'm about to *read* a Strike book.

Will I be able to make it at LEAST until tomorrow without cracking and going for the orange???

It's not looking hopeful. Prepare for the suspense of the century.

From: (Anonymous)

PROLOGUE

If the book starts with a roast dinner so help me

From: (Anonymous)

Opens on a wedding. I am in real danger.

From: (Anonymous)

Page 17. No roast, but they're eating a salmon starter. This doesn't appeal to me-- but I'm not getting complacent.

From: (Anonymous)

Roast-resentment notwithstanding, credit to Rowling as she manages to coin a two-word description for Wenlock and Mandeville: "cycloptic molars".

From: (Anonymous)

(and, no, am not THAT weird; like everyone else, I had to look up their names; I'd remembered them as "Wendell and whatsitsface".)

From: (Anonymous)

Oh! This is the one with the "leftists"! I'd forgotten that was in this book. One of my fave things in the series. :D

There's a guy who's wearing both a Mao hat and a Che T-shirt. There's a Jack-Monroe-style rich girl larping as a cockney. There's the hyperbolic, offensive rhetoric, sometimes co-opting real causes (inequality! The environment!), sometimes dissolving into nonsense, always with an undercurrent of antisemitism and all led by a pervy attention-seeker. Living in a city hosting the Olympics is compared to living under military occupation. The satire is spot-on (made better for Rowling allowing her "leftist" rabble to include some politics I'm pretty sure she agrees with; stops it feeling too preachy and fake). I think I'm going to enjoy it more, this time around, and I enjoyed it a lot last time.

From: (Anonymous)

Lethal White, Pg 138, and you can almost *hear* the editor, "If you make them infiltrate an obnoxious hard left group, people will assume Strike's far right! Fix it!!!"; there's a rather sudden and unsubtle detail about how he also particularly enjoyed infiltrating a far right group, in the past, and getting some prosecutions.

(As for roast dinners, currently doing okay. Have witnessed salmon, mousse, an ice cream, orange juice, cold roast beef, boiled potatoes, pad thai, and incalculable pints of beer, but no appetising roasts, in these pages, so far. I've just had a donburi readymeal and some chocolate biscuits, so I feel like my shields are up.)

From: (Anonymous)

Lethal White, p234. "the hacking organisation, Anonymous". +_+ Am sure I winced last time, just as hard. Why do people find this so hard.

From: (Anonymous)

(this is Strike POV, tbf, and he is a bit of a technophobe... but he's supposed to be a detective!)

From: (Anonymous)

I've never understood it, though. Why do media types struggle so MUCH with this? The word 'anonymous' isn't a new word, and is used in exactly the same way it is anywhere else. (I probably ranted the same way last time. My confusion has not diminished with time!)

From: (Anonymous)

Anyway, back to the food. Since we left off, Strike has ordered a fish and chips. Dangerous. BUT he ordered ketchup with it. Who has ketchup with *fish* and chips??? Salt and vinegar, or gtfo. Idk if I can see him the same way, after this.

From: (Anonymous)

Joke that went over my head, last time: a QC called Maugham, who's quick to throw tantrums and who is described as having a "smoothly porcine" face.

From: (Anonymous)

I saw something recently that was like "you wouldn't put the name of a foe in your book! That's giving them far too important a place!", and I remember thinking "If I wrote a book, I would absolutely put the names of every last prat who's ever annoyed me in it". So am amused to see Rowling seems to be closer to my side of that fence. :p

From: (Anonymous)

Also, I really should've known that Raphael was the killer the minute he tried to use his having killed a woman by accident as a chat-up line.

From: (Anonymous)

Still on Lethal White. I forgot how much of this one was puns. Aside from the murder centering on one big pun, Rowling's apparently on a mission to put a horse on every page. Pg 553:

"So, still no real leads?"

"Hold your horses."

+_+

She describes a hard left party (yet another pun) and it's so horrendous I'm still cringing. A young woman fucks the grey-haired mao-hatted old guy in a grim toilet. A man called Digby lectures the women on how feminism can only ever be a byproduct of marxism, while trying to look up their skirts. Another man hears a woman's father has died, and tries to use it to chat her up, sticking a thin veneer of politics on it so he can claim they have a bond (some 20ish years between them, too). The house is bedecked in nearly all the worst flags. Finished the chapters a while ago and I can still smell the BO. +_+

From: (Anonymous)

Finished. I had vaguely remembered that Chiswell was involved in exporting something immoral, but not the details or what. I found that part of the plot really odd, even though it's based on a real news story from 2006, because I'd've thought it made no economic sense for anybody. Manufacturing gallows in the UK and exporting them to much poorer countries? How is that profitable? Or affordable? Wouldn't they source them pretty much anywhere else? It's not like it's some new tech needing new, specific manufacturing techniques, which is the kind of thing where a poorer country might be forced to buy from a richer country; you'd think there'd be lots of (much!) cheaper competition. Found it odd on a first read, still find it odd now.

This one was better as a detective novel than Career of Evil, though; very convoluted and red herringy, but fair! You can reconstruct events and guess whodunnit/howdunnit/whydunnit based on the crime scene and other info you've been told, rather than requiring 1 tiny detail that isn't even in the book.

I mostly like this one for the relationship drama and PTSD stuff, though. And for the moral ambiguity of Chiswell himself, as you find out more about him with each chapter. Also, trying to fight off your bastard-son painting-thief murderer with your deceased golden-son's wall-mounted fencing sword is the most comically stereotypical old school MP behaviour, it made me laugh. This is indeed how all people entrusted with British government are supposed to operate. If you have never reached for a rapier on the wall to fight off an intruder, can you even call yourself an MP?

From: (Anonymous)

And I think having a relative who tries to kill you is a universal requirement for being a member of some aristocracy.

From: (Anonymous)

I want to go straight onto Troubled Blood (again!) for more Relationship Drama, but I need to travel soon and it's not the *easiest* book to carry around. Hate e-readers. So may be delayed. :( Hoping it'll function like Game of Thrones and there'll be a random copy that has sprung up at my destination. Pretty sure Game of Thrones just spawns fresh copies if you leave a bookshelf alone for a few days.